Raw Data

Last class when we were talking about Dashboards and how to set them up with all of the categories. One of them was “raw data” and It’s made me think how much raw data there must be out there in the world. The amount of information people post, share, like, link, click, view, ect, ect is unfathomable. Marketers already had copious amounts of information and statistics to build of off from filling out surveys and other random sources of intel. Social media data must be the holy grail for marketers. People post their age, gender, place they live in, where they’ve been, and what movies they like. People but a profile of their life out there for the world and what people can do with it is insane. I had a talk with another classmate and he told me that he was moving away from social media. When I ask why mentioned this exact thing. It is just too easy to gather personal information from anyone now. And I have to agree. It’s scary how much personal information we all post and is out there for others to use. 80% of the entire Y Gen (people aged 15-34) uses social media and logs in daily. The average number of social media site used per person in the Y Gen is 2.5. (http://www.insites-consulting.com/infographic-millennials-social-media/) These numbers are insane, and they are only going to get larger as younger generations grow up with social media and technology gets cheaper and more accessible. Social media is still a new thing to the world. It’s only going to get bigger and I’m positive that marketers and businesses haven’t even realized it’s full potential in targeting consumers. 

It’s mind blowing when you look at statistics of social media use. The raw data out there is infinite and gets bigger every day. 

SM and My Future

I’ve take a lot of courses at UBC. Most of them make me feel smarter and I get excited here and there, but usually I don’t ever feel special for talking the class. When I’m done I usually store some of information in my brain for debating and proving people wrong…but most of the time I forget the info 6 months later and never really feel like I’ll need it again. That is were Comm 464 came into play. 

This is the first class that I’ve taken (maybe outside of Environmental Marketing) that has got me excited. This is the first class I’ve taken were I want to absorb as much information as possible because I truly see myself having a future with it. SM is new and growing aspect of business that is just getting touched on. The things I’ve learned about SM blow my mind. How powerful it is and all of the different ways it can be used to improve a business. It’s a powerful marketing tool that you can use to not only market at, but learn from your target market by listening to a conversation.  It’s got customer service value in the way you can respond to consumers in real time and do damage control before problems arise. SM even offers a new stream of selling. These are only the aspects we know. It’s such a new technology and it’s constantly evolving and reinventing itself. I truly believe this is the future of business and while many companies have a SM department it will some day be as important as a marketing or accounting division within a business. 

I wanted to write this post to express how much I’ve learned and taken away from this class. With graduation coming in the next month for myself, people are always asking what I want to do next? I finally know now. I want to get into the world of Social Media.

Power of Pictures

One of the big trends that I’ve noticed over the last couple years with social media is users love for pictures. Look no further than the growth Instagram. It’s a social media outlet that is 100% designed around photos and it’s blown up. People love sharing photos and marketers are taking notice. It’s reported that it’s the fastest growing SM outlet amoungst marketers, (http://www.insidefacebook.com/2013/11/04/study-instagram-fastest-growing-social-network-among-marketers-worldwide/). It provides marketers to get back to the old-school Mad Men way of marketing with ads and have it be affective. For the most part I feel posters and billboards have lost their effect on consumers. We see like 20 000 ads a day? And it’s just second nature for us to ignore 19 900 of them. With Instragram markets don’t need to worry about placement of their ads because consumers are spreading it for them. Mercedes-Benz is the biggest brand utilizing Instagram currently, with just under half a million users. This mean that every time they post a photo half a million fans are going to see their ad. It’s not only the reach either, it’s how the ad would be perceived by the consumer. The pops up on consumers newsfeed and they perceive it to be just another picture from some one they follow. The picture could have all of the effects that an ad would have, without being seen like an ad to users. 

I’ve noticed this with other social media platforms as well. While I enjoy my friends Facebook status updates the true enjoyment I get from Facebook is creepy my friends photos. Twitter has seen a jump in engagement sense their new redesign which allows users to views photos directly on their feed instead of having to click on a link (http://www.buzzfeed.com/jwherrman/one-week-later-did-twitters-big-redesign-work). And of course, the newest trendy (possibly a fady?) SM, Snapchat. I was very reluctant to jump on the Snapping train, but I must admit, it’s pretty enjoyable. Something about being able to express your texts messages with a pictures makes it way more enjoyable. 

I’m not sure what the next big thing is going to be in the socail media world or how the current giants are going to change with the times, but I’m sure images are going to be playing a larger role in the big picture.

Preplanning Spontaneous Tweets

Twitter announced recently a new feature that allows companies to schedule tweets for the future. This is nothing new. As a music blogger it is something we use all the time. You write a entry at 2am because that’s when your most productive, but it’s not the ideal time to post it (as you want to get the most attention when you post it live and most of the world is sleeping at 2am). So, you just put a handy-dandy schedule post time on it and boom! While your still asleep at 11am, your post goes viral and you get the attention your perfect work deserves. 

It’s a very helpful feature that most posting type platforms do offer. However, I don’t think this fits with that Twitter is all about. Twitter, to me, is all about live in-action information. It has an element of spontaneous wit and to-the-minute updates that makes a continuous flow of information and entertainment that you don’t find through other media outlets. This feature is going to allow marketers to plan all their tweets ahead of time. P&G will have an intern write up 10 cleverly written tweets and have them scheduled to periodically pop-up throughout the next coming days.  With pre-planned Tweeting, companies are going to be able to flood Twitter with even more Tweets and I think it’s going to take away from what makes Twitter a powerful marketing tool. 

Companies are going to use this feature and it was only a matter of time before this was implemented. I would be cautious if I were them. If they start pilling up the ill-timed tweets they may find their follower count drop and negative non-planned tweets, about their planned tweets.

 

(via wearesocial.net: http://wearesocial.net/blog/2013/10/introducing-twitters-scheduled-tweets/)

ROI: Return On Internet

We’ve been talking lately about how to measure the effectiveness of social media outlets. I used to run my own music blog and wrote for another one for years. I used to always be concerned with one thing. Views. I wanted to get as many views on my site/posts as possible. I was never one to try and use key words that would pop-up in search engines, but I did spam Facebook and Twitter when I had a new post. I set up Google Analytics so I could check my views and see what dates got the most views and which posts were the most popular. However, when it came down to it. All I cared about was getting as many people to check out my blogging as possible. Our recent class and readings has made me think if that was the right strategy?

For what I was trying to achieve, getting people to check out my page might have been enough. I’m not a professional blogger by any means and did it purely for fun. The small, and to some point insignificant, stat of views was good enough for me. However, if I was a company that was relying on people checking out my page, just page views wouldn’t be enough information. You would have to look at how long people looked at your page, what other links did they check out on your page, how many people were new and old visitors, how frequent were people coming back to your page. There is probably hundreds of stats you could consider when trying to judge the effectiveness of your social media. That’s what has really stood out too me. How many different ways there are to measure social medias effectiveness. It’s easy for anyone to have a Facebook account set up to help their business, but how exactly do you want to utilize the account is the key question. If you don’t define how your going to use any social media outlet to benefit your company, then how are you going to be able to measure success. I think a lot of company still see social media as novelty item that just needs to there – having it is enough. Companies need to realize how powerful how a tool social media can be. Once you business objectives and what you want to achieve you with marketing. They need to look at social media and how it can help achieve these goals. Chances are it  will be more efficiently and cost effectively then traditional marketing efforts.

Businesses need to be open minded and think outside of the box in terms of using social media. It’s still a brand new tool and the extent to it’s uses are vastly undiscovered. With smart phones and tablets looking like the way of the future it’s only going to become an even bigger part of marketing success. Social media is a new age tool that needs to be fun and inventive. That being said, when it comes to utilizing it properly and gaging it’s success, the traditional methods of getting your ROI still remain the same.

Putting the “E” in GrEen

I’m still not sure what exactly I’m suppose to be blogging about in this class. Unfortunately, I missed 2/3 class thus far and still I’m feeling VERY behind in the class, but in the one class I did make it too I believe we were allowed to recycle (keeping with the green theme) an old blog so long as we shift the focus toward E-marketing. Seeing as this blog was used for green marketing, and much of green marketing is done through social media! I believe shifting my focus towards E-marketing wont be that difficult. Also, a few environment and suitability shout outs here and there is only going to be good for the world.

In the class I did make it too we touched on the ways in which business respond to customers through social media outlets. It’s become such an important part of a business for the last decade. The days of having to write out a complaint in person – never to have your voice heard – are dead. All it takes is one person to tweet something bad about your company and you could be front page news. Monitoring and responding to questions and criticism is essential for not only maintaining public image but also improving it. This is something I, and probably most people, realize. However, one thing I didn’t think about before our class last week. Was the importance to not respond.

Seeing the word “troll” on the presentation slide sort of threw me off. It’s only a term I’ve ever really heard when people are talking about video games. It made me think though. When people are “trolling” they are looking to cause an over reaction from target. Once they get the target to react, it only gets worse. That’s why the best tactic to deal with this type of attack is to say nothing. I knew this from personal experience on social media, but never though about it from a business stand point. 

It was interesting to think about and I’m looking forward to more epiphanies in future classes.

 

McWills 

Last Post…

Wow, after reading the questions we were asked to think about when writing this post and how our perspective has changed sense the beginning of the semester…it’s pretty crazy. I always thought I understood sustainable business pretty well. I’ve always cared about the environment and done more then the average person (or so I’d like to think). I’d also taken a bunch of courses based around business/economics and sustainability. This course however really changed my view on how business play the key roll in society, marketers specifically.

What I’ve really learned over the semester that a lot of being green is being able to afford the change or offering up a environmentally responsible product. It’s about giving people want they want. If not enough consumers want green products, then it doesn’t make sense to produce them. If I’m a company and nobody is going to pay the price to make a product sustainable – why make it? I wouldn’t, and they don’t. That’s why sustainable marking is so important. In fact, I think it’s the most important part of the environmentally business circle. Consumers are always going to consumer. It’s the marketers jobs to convince the people to consume the green products.

I’ve really grown to believe that the future of business is sustainability. We are going to have to be smarter on a global scale to help save the Earth and make it last for the generations to come. This is going to require business to be smart in their product, whether they like it or not. Regulation and social pressure is going to make business change to green if they wish to stay in the black. The marketing side of that is going to become very important. Taking businesses already established and marketing their change to the green side is going to be incredibility important.

And in terms of what a sustainable society will look like…I envision a world of business that don’t produce new products but reproduce products. Constantly converting products and reusing them. I envision more services then goods being used. Lending, rending, and borrowing in a coop of sharing between people. Companies like Zipcar and Netflix are getting it right. They are taking away the tangle part of good, but keeping all of the tangable benefits. The Vancouver zero waste goal is something all companies should take note of.

I think all businesses need to remember they’re three R’s because the future is going to force them too.

It’s been real Comm 486F.

 

McWills

Learning “Crowdsourcing”

I’ve been going through a bunch of my classmates blogs looking for something to spark my interest and the term crowdsourcing has come up A LOT. I skipped most of these blogs because I didn’t exactly remember what it meant, but after seeing it on the third blog post I figured it was time I read one and learnt something. It turns out the blog I was reading (http://hillarykang6.wordpress.com/) didn’t full grasp the idea either, which made me want to understand it even more!

The first place thing I do when I don’t understand a concept I google it and 99% of that search leads me to the all-knowing Wikipedia! And after reading the wiki Definition

“Crowdsourcing is the practice of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, and especially from an online community, rather than from traditional employees or suppliers. Often used to subdivide tedious work or to fund-raise startup companies and charities, this process can occur both online and offline.^[1] The general concept is to combine the efforts of crowds of volunteers or part-time workers, where each one could contribute a small portion, which adds into a relatively large or significant result. Crowdsourcing is different from an ordinary outsourcing since it is a task or problem that is outsourced to an undefined public rather than to a specific, named group.”

It dawned on me that this is exactly what sustainable business need! Taking a large idea and getting a little help from a lot of people? That’s precisely what green businesses need to do. We have learned that the best way to get people committed is to get them involved. The best way to communicate to people is to get them involved. Crowsourcing gets people involved! Saving the planet is a pretty big job and there is no way any one person/company can do it alone. Heck! Not even 100 companies could do it alone. It’s an issue that will take a whole lot of people to fix and mend. This is were crowdsourcing and marketing or sustainable marketing can really help.

Obviously crowdsourcing is theory is amazing…and achieving it is much harder said then done. It’s the way of thinking that I really like. Taking a BIG problem and a BIG group of people to do little parts to fix it is what sustainability needs to focus on. People don’t dislike being green, it’s people don’t like being a True Blue. Asking people to change their entire life for the betterment of the Earth is too unrealistic. It’s little changes that are do able, and if you get enough people making little changes it’ll achieve big results. This is exactly what crowdsourcing does.

Rise Upcycling

Once again I was browsing through my classmates blogs, half because I like hearing peoples perspective on sustainability in business…tangent. I think it’s hilarious when you talk to business students about a sustainable business. Most people will try and say they totally support green, but really don’t know what they are talking apart. For such an educated, reputable  and forward thinking school, Sauder is defiantly lack in the future of the environment. Well, at least when it comes to the students I talk to outside of Comm 486F.

Anyways, back to my point. Cruising the blogs because I like the thoughts…and because we have to, when I came across this one (http://blogs.ubc.ca/sustainabletom/2013/02/24/rise-upcycling/). My friend Tom posted it and it’s about my friend Sayan’s company Rise Upcycling. That reason alone was enough to make me want to write on it, but you have to love that this company is doing.

Rise Upcycling is a young company based in Vancouver that will take exclusivity old clothing and turns them into new, incredibly nice clothing. I love it. It not only cuts down on the waste of old clothing by extending the clothes life cycle, but will cut down on the need to produce new clothing. Not only that, the clothing is dope! It’s god great personality, great cause, and is gaining a lot of attention.

There are defiantly some flaws to worry about in the business model (dependence on receiving clothing, getting the right clothing to produce new designs, ect), but this is the forward thinking new businesses need to take. I’ve touched on it in past posts how I believe it’s going to be a necessity for companies to be green in the not so far off future and companies like Rise Upcycling are taking the proactive steps to get ahead of the curve.

I love finding these stories of kid, such as myself, that do extraordinary things. It’s even cooler when you no one of them. Great job Rise, and keep it up Sayan!

Future Pop

I have been cruising through people’s blogs looking for some articles that really interested me when I came across (http://thegreentalk.wordpress.com/2013/02/06/a-viral-victory/). I wont lie, I was drawn in because they mentioned the Super Bowl, but after reading the article and watching the ad I really like the idea.

There’s a few ideas that I’ve come to really focus on over this semester. One of them being the irony of sustainable marketing. Marketing creates desire, desire creates demand, demand creates consumption, composition becomes waste. We all know the drill. That’s why products like this that change the way we consumer, I adore.

They are obviously not going going to be any true threat for Coke or Pepsi (for the time being at least), but the idea behind their product is perfect. They have essentially created the coffee machine for kids! I was interested to read in the other blog that it’s be around for years (I had no idea) but I think now is a time when it can really catch on. It’s a sleek machine that lets you make your own soft drinks, which will not only cut down on production of cans and all the externalities that come with it (production, transportation, ect) but is more convenient to the consumer then buying heavy packages at the store.

They have a very long way to go to be competition for the power-houses C and P, but this is a fantastic idea which both the environmental  and consumer benefits to be a success in the future.